[ReeferJon]

I've been desperate to upgrade the, frankly, horrible Windows Smartphone I was talked into buying by Orange last year. It's the Orange SPV-C500 (also sold as Audiovox in the US.) Even with PocketMac for Smartphone installed on the Mac, the SPV still wouldn't do have the Bluetooth tricks of my old Sony-Ericsson T610 and I couldn't even use it over Bluetooth as a modem.

Anyway, I spent a few pleasant evenings surfing the 'net and came down to two options for my next phone.. The excellent Symbian-based Sony Ericsson T910 ( I've got quite a few friends who use these ) and the PalmOne Treo 650. After much careful consideration I plumped for the Treo 650, primarily because of the higher resolution (if smaller) screen, and much wider library of available software.

I nipped down to the local Orange business centre on Oxford Street in London one lunchtime, and walked out £99 lighter, with one Treo 650! Over the weekend, because the weather was fairly awful and the girlfriend's away, I've had an opportunity to install some software on the Treo, and get it working nicely with the Mac (thanks to Mark/Space's Missing Sync for Palm)

So what's this got to do with Mac Sailing then, I hear you cry. Well, as you probably know two of my biggest moans about the marine computing are:

• The lack of small cheap sunlight-viewable monitors on the market[/list:u]
  • The lack of non-Windows support by the large cartography houses (C-Map and Navionics in particular)[/list:u]
    
    Although the Treo won't help me with the last point, could it's tiny transflective screen be of any use for showing charts? There are two options here.. either display my Maptech UK charts "natively" on the Treo, or display an image of the Mac screen remotely on it.
    
    
    Showing charts natively
    
    There isn't a great deal of chartplotting software out there for the Palm. The obvious solution would have been [url=http://www.maptech.com/products/outdoornavigator/index.cfm]MapTech's Outdoor Navigator software. However this doesn't support their non-US cartography so it's of very little use to me, sailing as I around Southern England. Their other software, Pocket Navigator only supports Windows Pocket PC.
    
    The other application that I found was called [url=http://www.pathaway.com/]Pathaway 3 by Muskokatech . Although Pathaway doesn't natively support Maptech BSB 4.0 charts, it comes with Windows software to allow you convert your JPG or BMP scanned charts into it's native format. After much messing about with GPSNavX's printing support, some interesting custom paper sizes and VirtualPC, I'd managed to convert the Maptech chart of the Solent (my main cruising ground) to JPEG, halved the resolution and uploaded it to the Treo's SD card.
    
    When I fired up the Pathaway software on the Treo and opened the chart, I was really impressed. The 320 x 320 pixel screen on the Treo instantly opened the chart, and by dragging the stylus around the screen, the map panned effortlessly, with almost instant redraw. Also the screen quality itself is excellent.
    
    Displaying the chart is all very well, but how to I indend to plot the position of my vessel on it with no GPS? My initial plan was to use GPSNavX as my primary plotter in the cabin, and then configure it to repeat the NMEA stream to my Mac's onboard Bluetooth port, and then configure PathAway to treat the Mac as a Bluetooth GPS. I'm not altogether convinced that this'll work, and can't try it as I have no way of simulating GPS data over Bluetooth until I go down to the boat this weekend. It might even be possible ( and I could be rather optimistic here) to upload routes and waypoints to the Treo with GPSNavX. That would be seriously cool!
    
    The second option is to purchase a cheap Bluetooth GPS (which would be extremely useful as an on-board backup for the Mac, and for use directly with the Treo, even possibly with auto navigation.) I'm seriously thinking about this option, and will probably place an order for one next week anyway (see my other post about Expansys' deal on the Socket Bluetooth OEM GPS)
    
    
    Showing charts remotely
    
    The second option is to display GPSNavX's screen remotely on the Treo. The easiest way to accomplish this would be to use VNC, an opensource remote control protocol that's been around for a few years now.
    
    I already have OSXVNC Server running on the Mac (in the week it's my fileserver!), but how can I access this from the Treo?
    
    Luckily there are a number of VNC clients available for PalmOS. I downloaded and installed [url=http://palmvnc2.free.fr/productinfo.php]PalmVNC 2.0 . This enables me to connect to the Mac either over GPRS (when it's plugged in as a fileserver at home) or, via Bluetooth directly to the Mac when on board.
    
    The obvious limitations of the VNC access method are the screensize (320 x 320 pixels on the Treo means that you can only display a small portion of the 1024 x 768 desktop on the Mac at 1:1 scaling) and the speed (even over Bluetooth directly, trying to control the Mac is painfully slow. Although, if you're just displaying the vessel's current position, screen refresh is not so much of an issue.)
    
    
    So, in conclusion, I'd have to say that I'm delighted with the Treo 650. It's a great little device that has so many uses (I was even watching Alien vs Preditor on it this morning while on the Tube!) As far as using it for marine navigation goes, I'd recommend the excellent PathAway 3 software and converting your charts. It's a great piece of software boasting many features that some full-sized computer applications don't have. However MuskokaTech need to release a Mac version of their chart conversion software!
    
    I'll try and get some screenshots (along with some other photo's I've been promising to take!)